Obviously they are telling their readers not to assume that "day" literally means "day". It can be a poetic way of referring to an indefinite length of time. God's "days" are not our days.
Yes they are our days - God became man - God became one of us - Fully Human, Fully Divine. Both are correct - both points of view are true with unconfused union.
So why is there this fascination with scripture being literal? What is the importance attached to the quality of being "literal"?
As above, it is very important in terms of symbol, salvation, liturgy and prayer.
God became man so that man could be restored to the Divine nature. God made man on the 6th day when he declared all He made was Very Good - God alone is good.
"God became man so man could become like God" - St. Gregory the Theologian. There is no confusion of time - symbol is of that which it symbolizes.
So we experience God in our nature when we make a home for Him - the Holy Mystery.
When as a professor, one writes an equation on the board, that equation becomes part of the understanding of the students - the students obey or disobey the equations in their interactions with nature or machinery described by the equations. The equations are symbols, but they become part of a kinematic human/environment/machine experience that is total - symbolic - REAL and LITERALLY true.
This is ancient Theology which had no problem with evolution or anything else scientific - God experiences as man as we experience.
And God could not be omipotent if he didn't know what it was like not to know something, so God is eternally the Word - the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, so that God the Son, the Word, experiences learning, experiences not knowing, experiences faith, hope and love - and fully becomes man so He can save us by leading by example. So God knows all things - even what it is not to know - and to have faith etc....
Are you sure it is literalness you are valuing? Or is it genuineness, reality, truth or some such quality? If so, why call this quality "literal"?
The divorce of thought that says a symbol is a "mere" representation in an abstract way is a sort of heresy - arguably - in that Jesus becomes an abstraction and His Godhood an abstract quality, and our participation in His redemption and the Holy Mysteries becomes an abstraction.
And each abstraction reduces further and further until faith sort of evaporates away.....
But the term "literal" is a semantic - it is important that we recognize the reality and literal truth of those things that have a poetic meaning.
Maybe the term "real" would be better????
Have you checked out the meaning of "literal"? Like most words it has several meanings. In translation, for example, it refers to the actual word-by-word literal translation---which may not convey what is intended in the target language. A French man may call his sweetheart "mon petit chou" and she will take it as an endearment, but the literal translation ("my little cabbage") is unlikely to win him the same reaction in English.
Both are true - my little cabbage is a term of endearment in the symbolic sense - the literal understanding is important in conveying the fullness of the love one has for another in the cultural context. I think literalism is important - as long as one also knows it is a term of endearment - the fullness of knowledge only makes the literal an essential component to go to the root meaning.
Or what does "literal" mean in this scenario (overheard on the bus one morning). A girl is telling her friend about her father's reaction when she came in late Saturday night. "Was he angry? I guess! He literally exploded!"
A not uncommon usage of "literal" yet almost 100% removed from the basic meaning. If there is one thing he did not literally do, it was fly to pieces like a piece of dynamite. Here, ironically, "literally" is used to refer to a symbolic analogy.
Truth has precision - to a limit.
Consider Pi - does it exist in the universe to the last digit? There is a limit - turns out the universe is non-euclidean and while Pi crops up all over the place, in a quantized sense, one never experiences Pi to its totality because somewhere in real space-time - Heisenberg kicks in (which limit itself is related to Pi
)
So literal has fundamental limitations. Whether font, typing, language, or physics, there is a limit to which all literal truths are "literal" in a precise sense.
Yet something can be literally true, and it is important to realize it as a literal truth from an experiential aspect.
Jesus is God. Jesus is Word become man - fully human, fully divine. The Word created the Universe. The Word as man experiences creation in seven literal, liturgical days - Jesus prayed and sang the Psalms, including Psalm 90 - we know that from Scripture. Therefore, Jesus experienced the creation as a liturgical week, entering prayer, time above time, and did so as fully human. So fully human, He knew the silence of God (Psalm 22) and God's silent answer.
One can believe in literal and figurative in unconfused union if one can believe in God omnipotent, fully human, fully divine in unconfused union.
So what does "literal" mean in reference to scripture? Is the snake in the garden of Eden a literal snake?
Yes - and it is also our tongue, and our esophagus according to the ancient Church Fathers. And the fruit of knowing good and evil - the logical result - is judging. Yet the literal and figurative and intellectual and abstract all are real and symbolic and of that which is eternal.
The Genesis text gives us no reason (other than its power of human speech) to think it is not. But in Revelation we are told it is a symbol of Satan.
The snake is also a symbol of Christ - remember, Jesus was lifted up as the Serpent was lifted up - and Moses staff became a serpent. And in Psalm 22, Jesus says "I am a worm and no man" - so that being lifted up as a serpent, he overcomes our nature transforming the serpent into a worm - and no man, despised by the congregation. He does not judge us to oblivion, but rather in utter humility prays that we be forgiven because we don't know what we are doing.
I certainly don't! Thank God I am ignorant. But I believe in literal truth at the same time symbolic in unconfused union because otherwise, I think my little head would literally explode.....
So some then say "Well it is literally Satan." What on earth does that mean? Does it mean it is really Satan and not a snake? In that case "literally" is the wrong term. It is literally a snake and symbolically Satan. And the relevant meaning is the symbolic meaning.
Literally and symbolically because symbol is literal -
Symbol A is of thing B in ancient Eastern thought - and it is so even today in how we actually do things. The separation of thought, that a symbol is merely a representation, is a reduction of the term to isolate it - yet in its total integral application, once conveyed the symbol is of that which it symbolizes in an integral sense.
In Eastern thought, integral is important. In western, we tend to differentiate. Differential understanding taken in the extreme can be detrimental to understanding truths conveyed from an Eastern culture - poetically, liturgically.
Does this amount to "dismissing" the truth of the text or is it actually honouring the truth of the text?
Why is non-literal interpretation, which is so often needed in scripture, looked at with suspicion? What value attaches to the quality "literal" that so much effort is put into verifying that the text really has a "literal" meaning?
I agree - but a non-literal interpretation outside the thought processes of the Eastern thinkers is not a fully honest interpretation. I love Brussel sprouts by the way...
It is important to remember that all texts have a literal meaning--including poetry, fiction, fables and fairy tales. The question is whether the literal meaning is also an empirical (real) meaning or whether, as you say, it is a poetic frame for a real meaning.
A symbol becomes that which it symbolizes when we obey or disobey it - it becomes part of our reality just as these symbols on the page evoke in you some sort of response. From a total perspective, integral, it has an impact on some level- these symbols will effect your life.
I hope and pray for the better. Anyway, that is how this sinner thinks of that stuff so his brain doesn't explode.
I don't see the point of recognizing that the important truth of a passage is expressed poetically or symbolically and still insisting that it is "literally true" unless:
1) I understand what the speaker means by "literal" in this case and
2) I understand why it is important to the speaker that it be "literal".
I think the literal truth is important because we have in the Church, in some way shape or form, a liturgy, a prayer of the people that we enter. When we go into Church, we love God and our neighbor - we pray, we enter a mystical union with those around us.
The Gospel symbols, the Church symbols, become part of our thinking, and how we act ....
I think in most cases, people cling to the word "literal" because they associate it with being "true". But then "literally true" is a tautology. It is enough to say it is true.
St. Ephraim the Syrian I believe and St. Basil the Great both taught it was very important that we see Genesis as literally true - and I think that goes to ancient Iconography that shows Jesus the word creating the Universe.
God the Word became man to redeem the entire universe - by man the universe fell, by God become man, it is redeemed.
God as man experiences the eons of old as seven liturgical, literal days and invites us into the Holy Mystery to so experience - literally, those truths as human - as fully man, filled with and containing the uncontainable God.
Its a mystery - but its fun and I think beautiful to consider at least this point of view, of literal symbolic truth.
Yet there are also many who associate "literal" with "plain sense" (or "common sense" or "basic meaning"). This is closest to the usual meaning of "literal" when one is not talking about scripture.
The problems arise when one tries to insist on both these meanings at once. For the plain, common, basic meaning of "day" is "one transit of the sun across the sky" (or in modern parlance, one rotation of the earth on its axis). But if the truth is more in line with David and Peter's caution on the meaning of "day" then the common sense meaning is not the true meaning---and both cannot be "literal".
And in Psalm 19 (KJV), the transit of the Sun refers to the Sun in the sky - but our Sun is the Son of God, and so it refers to His ministry as foretold by David in prayer - mystically, entering a time above time.
He came as the light in the darkness, and healed ....
ex....
